How far back in time can you understand English?

tried to read Prince and I assume it is a translation to English from Italian or whatever.

Assuming that translation was done a while ago (100+ yrs?)... It is hard to read. I can understand it if I try. But the phrasing is not current. 100 pages will take double the time at the least.

Almost think AI needs to rephrase it into current English.

Probably has these double negatives, long sentences, etc.

A native Frisian speaker would probably have an even easier time, given that Frisian is the closest language to English. However, Frisian is still more similar to other west-germanic languages than English.

I am Indian. I read easily to 1400. But then 1300 is suddenly difficult to read

My experience traveling to the Netherlands as an English speaker is that people are speaking English, but they're drunk!

What accent did you read it in? Vlaams? Gronings?

Indeed, I remember being in Oxford in the 90s and an older man approached me and spoke to me in English and I couldn’t understand a word he said. My ex-wife, who’s an ESL speaker who speaks fluently and without an accent has trouble with English accents in general. Similarly, in Spanish, I find it’s generally easier for me to understand Spanish speakers than Mexican speakers even though I learned Mexican Spanish in school and it’s been my primary exposure to the language. Likewise, I generally have an easier time understanding South American speakers than Caribbean speakers and both sound little like Mexican Spanish. (The Spanish I understand most easily is the heavily accented Spanish of non-native Spanish speakers.)

Accents have diverged a lot over time and as I recall, American English (particularly the mid-Atlantic seaboard variety) is closer to what Shakespeare and his cohort spoke than the standard BBC accent employed in most contemporary Shakespeare productions).

Yeah it’s really just the glyphs that are changing here, and occasionally the spelling, otherwise the words themselves are still fairly recognizable if you’re well-read.

Thanks, that's such a great detail. I was reading Lovecraft during highschool in locally translated print editions. Where such details didn't come through.

Do you know if there any other such language related eastereggs in other of Lovecraft's writing? should I chose to revisit them, in English this time around.

for a very specific dialect of Northern English. I struggled to understand much beyond 1950, and I had a good ear

Shakespeare is a definite barrier.

Since these occur primarily in ephemeral communication, it’s unclear how much of a lasting influence there will be. It’s also “only” vocabulary, to a limited degree orthography, and rarely grammar.

Orthography is probably the biggest stumbling block going back to the 1500s or 1400s , but that’s really because the rest of the language has changed in vocabulary and style, but is still understandable. If you think the 1200 or 1100 entry are mostly orthographical changes then you are missing the interesting bits.

Things like slang and casual registers always seem to move much faster but for some reason we assume it's always going to be the next set newer than how we'd write that will result in things going off the rails or resulting in it being the only speech understood by that generation.

Lowkey though, let’s keep it 100 and check it. Back in the day Millennials got totally ragged on for sounding all extra like this n' usin all sort of txting abbreviations early on 2. Yet they can still peep oldskool English just the same - talk about insane in the membrane, for real.

"unc" can't be used as an adjective like that.

fr fr, OP be cappin 2000 ain't English

It exists! Showed up on HN a few months back: https://github.com/DGoettlich/history-llms

Only from 1913-1946 though.

The 2000 sample was a bit exaggerated.

In 1500 a lot of pronunciation would've been different too, it was in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift [1]. And of course while the UK is still (in)famous for its many accents and dialects, some nigh mutually unintelligible, the situation would've been even worse back then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift

[dead]

I think it depends a lot on the history of the language. My native language is French, and since long ago various authorities try to normalize and "purify" the language. This is why the gap between spoken French and written French is so wide. Now my experience as an avid reader...

Books written in the 17th century or later are easy to read. Of course, the meaning of some words can change over time but that's a minor trouble. I believe Molière and Racine are still studied in school nowadays, but the first name that came to my mind was Cyrano de Bergerac (the writer, not the fictitious character).

Books from the 16th need practice, but I think anyone who tries hard will get used to the language. I enjoyed Rabelais's Pantagruel and Gargantua a lot, and I first read them by myself when I was in highschool (I knew a bit of Latin and Greek, which helped).

Before that, French was much more diverse; the famous split into "langue d'oc" and "langue d'oïl" (terms for "oui" — yes — at the time) is a simplification, because there were many dialects with blurry contours over space and time.

I've read several 11th-12th novels about the Round Table, but I was already experienced in Old French when I started, and I think most readers would struggle to make sense of it. It may depend on the dialect; I remember "Mort Artur" was easier than "Lancelot, le chevalier à la charette".

"La chanson de Roland" (11th century, Old French named anglo-normand) is one of my favorite books of all times. Reading it for the first time was a long process — I learned the declensions of Old French and a lot of vocabulary — but it was also fun, like deciphering some mystery. And the poesy is a marvel, epic, incredibly concise, surprising and deep.

Before that (9th-10th), Old French was even closer to Latin.

People read Shahname[1] regularly in Iran, and it was written at around 1000 CE, but there isn't much before 900 CE that is comprehensible to a modern day Persian speaker.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh

The Shahnameh is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author.

If you're interested you can read up on language change (and glottochronology, although that's a bit controversial now), and the Swadesh lists.

In general, language changes around at the same rate all over history and geography, barring some things (migration, liturgical languages)

This is, roughly, a measure of how old your civilization is.

For square Hebrew (Assyrian) you can go back for about 2000 years. So for example Dead Sea scrolls are fairly readable. But old classical Hebrew impossible.

There is an interesting review of The Wake on the PSmiths literary substack:

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/guest-review-the-wake-by-paul-k...

And here's the Simon Roper videos acknowledged in the article: "From Old English to Modern American English in One Monologue" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=842OX2_vCic (short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_pS3_c6QkI ). This runs forward rather than back in time. However, Roper's "How Far Back Can You Understand Northern English?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Zqn9_OQAw does run backwards in time.

Some early English translations of the Bible were unintentionally comical, e.g., “and Enoch walked with God and he was a lucky fellowe.”

Of course that’s not limited to the 16th century. The Good News Bible renders what is most commonly given as “our name is Legion for we are many” instead as “our name is Mob because there are a lot of us.” In my mind I hear the former spoken in that sort of stereotypical demon voice: deep with chorus effect, the latter spoken like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Yeah same. The explanation at the bottom is interesting, lots of the words imported from Normandy drop off then, and the grammar changes more significantly.

I was able to get the gist of 1200, with some effort. By paragraph:

P1: Unclear, but I think it's basically saying there is much to say about all that happened to him.

[Edit: the more I stare at it, the more sense it makes. "There is much to say about all that ? was wrought on me, ???. I shall never forget it, not while I live!"]

P2: Unexpectedly, a woman ("uuif", wife) appeared at "great speed" to save him. "She came in among the evil men..."

P3: "She slaughtered the heathen men that pinned me, slaughtered them and felled them to the ground. There was blood and bale enough and the fallen lay still, for [they could no more?] stand. As for the Maister, the [wrathe?] Maister, he fled away in the darkness and was seen no more."

P4: The protagonist thanks the woman for saving him, "I thank thee..."

On first reading, I didn't know what "uuif" was. I had to look that one up.

Don't get the reference compared to the text in the article for that timeframe.

Is there something specific in there?

At 1400, they add in the thorn "þ". If you don't know that's supposed to be "th", you'll get stuck there.

Not sure what you mean?

I don't know what your problem is, your comments so far are all low effort and not really contributing to the conversation.

Your language is not acceptable here.

If you're not already shadow-banned I suspect that's the way you're heading.

Have a word with yourself. (A British idiom, meaning to consider what you're doing, particularly in terms of morality and cultural acceptability.)

What would they say?

> worse or better then now?

*than.

Which I realize is an ironic correction in this context. I wonder if we'll lose a separate then/than and disambiguate by context.

I'm heading to Stornoway next week, I don't hold out much hope

I can comprehend most of the text back to 1300, if slower than Modern/Present Day English. It helps to know the old letter forms, and some of how Shakespearean (Early Modern), Middle, and Old English work. It also helps sounding it out.

Past that, I'm not familiar with Old English enough to understand and follow the text.